my POD (Poem Of The Day)
~Before the hawk sailed
In the space between the mountain & the moon
Before magic made the Word
Before Isis was veiled
I flourished in the mirrored sea
Waiting for this life
With you
~hag
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Like quicksilver, the messenger of the gods, darts thru dark tangled alleys. Is he a healer, or a trickster, or maybe a thief? With a light step, in his winged sandals, he confidently goes through hidden passages in the night. In his hands a golden key has the power to open all the doors before him. There is no place dark enough or deep enough that he cannot reach. Not even the realm of the Shades, for in his role as pyschopomp he is a guide to souls, in initiation, & to the place of the dead.
Mercury is the only god allowed to come & go from the Underworld. Standing now in retrograde in Scorpio, this powerful aspect of Mercury, as ‘guide into the depths’, is especially enhanced. Mercury retrograde is about the mind turning its attention within. The psyche becomes the object of observation. And immediately the alchemical motto of the V.I.T.R.I.O.L.V.M. is evoked.
Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem Veram Medicinam. Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying you will find the hidden stone which is the true medicine. The black dirt of Egypt (al-Kemia) contains vital forces hiding in the mud.
Working on our shadow side isn’t easy, & is often avoided. It’s the soul’s journey into the vault where we keep all our secrets hidden away. Confronting our unconscious fears takes a force of will; & this transit can help.
Get ready friends, because all the shadows that emerged during the lockdown—which was a forced social Nigredo—are going to come back during Mercury retrograde in Scorpio. In alchemy, nigredo, or blackness, means putrefaction or decomposition. This is the 1st step in the cultivation of the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’. All alchemical ingredients have to be cleansed & cooked down into a uniform black primordial matter.
In analytical psychology, the term became a metaphor for ‘the dark night of the soul, when we must confront the shadow within.’
Besides the shadow work, with Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio, we might also experience the return of relationships, or external situations, which we thought were over & done with. Or perhaps we will glean some insights about them. This is what Scorpio does; it turns Mercury into a private detective. Truths are unveiled.
Mercury also performs an opposition to Uranus in Taurus; & also a strong square with Saturn – Two perfect squares immediately before & then after the 2nd stationary point.
The opposition with Uranus is about technology, means of transport & communication, betraying us. Isn’t that the way the truth often comes out, by a kind of betrayal? Messages sent to the wrong person—a classic. A slip of the tongue; or a chance encounter, revealing where we really were.
And the square with Saturn, brings deep intuition, because of Mercury being in Scorpio; which then comes knocking up against our intellectual reasoning, since Saturn is in Capricorn. Our gut is going to tell us one thing, our intellect, something else. Not only it will be very difficult to be reasonable, but it will be just as easy to be suspicious.
This year we had Mercury retrograde in all Water signs: Pisces, Cancer & now Scorpio. This created a great triangle of water in the sky. Water is the element of emotions & feelings.
Interesting that next year we will see Mercury doing the same thing in Air signs: Aquarius, Gemini & Libra; perhaps that will bring an opportunity to change our way of thinking?
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11 October 2020 – “Speaking with the Stars”: If you’re awake in the early dawn, like I am, tomorrow, Monday the 12th, the waning crescent Moon stands very high above bright Venus. It’s been fascinating to watch Venus as morning star reveal herself. Look between Bella Luna & the goddess of Love, for Regulus, the forefoot of Leo.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Rudolf Steiner’s Lectures on this day
1138 – A massive earthquake strikes Aleppo, Syria. The third deadliest earthquake in history with over 230,000 killed
1582 – Because of the adoption of the Gregorian calendar, this day does not exist in this year in Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain
1634 – The Burchardi flood: killed around 15,000 in North Friesland, Denmark & Germany
1809 – Along the Natchez Trace in Tennessee, explorer Meriwether Lewis dies under mysterious circumstances at an inn called Grinder’s Stand
1890 – The Daughters of the American Revolution is founded
1906 – San Francisco public school board sparks a diplomatic crisis between the United States & Japan by ordering Japanese students to be taught in racially segregated schools
1918 – The Puerto Rico earthquake shakes the island with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing 1116 people
1958 –NASA launches the lunar probe Pioneer 1 which falls back to Earth & burns up
1962 – Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convenes the first ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years
1968 –NASA launches Apollo 7, the first successful manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele & Walter Cunningham aboard
1972 – A race riot occurs on the United States Navy aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk off the coast of Vietnam during Operation Linebacker
1984 – Aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a spacewalk
2000 – NASA launches STS-92, the 100th Space Shuttle mission, using Space Shuttle Discovery
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Thanks to all who heard the call & took up the invitation to join us for the workshop: Sophia Working. I hope to be able to share the link to the recording soon
xox
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‘Soul to Soul’ on-line Festival with the Central Regional Council & Speical Guests
Halloween 31 October 2020, Saturday 11 am – 1 pm PT / 1 pm – 3 pm CT / 2pm – 4pm ET
Stay tuned for details
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The Connection Between Epidemics, the Souls of the Dead, & the Spiritual World – Leading thoughts by Hazel Archer-Ginsberg.
2 pm – 4 pm CDT 8 Nov. 2020 Our Annual All Souls Festival
With Group Eurythmy, Singing, Social Sculpture while reading the names of the dead, & Break out Sessions.
In-person at Elderberries Biodynamic Outpost & 3 fold Cultural Hub, in conjunction with the Rudolf Steiner Branch Chicago, 4249-51 N. Lincoln Ave.
& On-line (details coming soon)
2 pm – 4 pm CDT Sunday 8 November 2020
Hi Hazel,
Here is the problem with this discourse, and maybe you already anticipated it. I know there is a lineage going back to Copernicus. In more recent times we can find it extended by no less than Elizabeth Vreede, Georg Unger, Willi Sucher, and Jonathan Hilton. It concerns the exchange of Mercury and Venus. In this latest display, it seems to be coming from Hilton, who isn’t even mentioned.
Yet, while he might be a presence or not, it can be shown that any assessment of Mercury in Scorpio is wrong. Only the planet Venus can be found in Scorpio, and this is because the Sun is passing from Virgo into Libra, and this allows its closest planet, Venus, to elongate into the next zodiacal sign. This previously took place when the Sun was in the sign of Taurus, and Venus and Mercury came together for a short time. Then, Venus went ahead into the sign of Gemini, while Mercury was in retrograde in Taurus for an extended time.
Now, true Mercury, which is still the morning star, is in the sign of Leo, and was very close to Regulus. The waning crescent moon comes close to Mercury on the 14th, just two days before New Moon. This is when we should calculate our Michaelmas celebration. Sunday, October 18th. First Sunday after the first New Moon after the Autumnal Equinox. It requires a calculation similar to Easter, which just might put it on the map.
Dunno though, considering how much we love to conform. Even Easter is on the docket to make it the first Sunday in April. Apparently, it allows calendar dates to be affixed for years without these silly moon parameters. A technological age would love it, no doubt.
Yes, thanks for the reminder that we can & must interchange these 2 inner planets Venus & Mercury.
As you know i often make a point of doing this outwardly.
Other times I create a different focus, but always with the inner knowing that we must combine the energies of the healer/psychopomp with beauty.
I’m not sure what our dear astrosopher JH would say, i haven’t consulted him about this particular discourse, but I’m sure he would have much to add.
Well, I found it very astrosophical, and if that came from your discernment, I am deeply impressed. I still don’t see how Jupiter and Saturn could possibly conjunct by December 21st, but we will see. I observe them every night when the sky is clear, and the distance between them seems impossible to cover in the nearly next two months. But, I also watch for miracles, and modern astronomy seems to indicate that this conjunction will occur by the winter solstice. It was the Nathan Jesus born then, and the Heavenly Host was the Buddha, who shone down on this place, a mere manger, in the town of Bethlehem. Why did the Buddha shine down on this infant? Steiner never exactly revealed it, but it is because this Jesus child was the incarnation, for the first time on earth, of Krishna, the predecessor of Buddha. So, it was important.
The Buddha provided the astral body for the Nathan Jesus
Hi Hazel,
This is important. The Buddha shone down on the infant Jesus, and irradiated this child as the living successor to Krishna. Lectures on the Gospel of Luke indicate that it was actually Jesus who bequeathed his cosmic astral sheath to the Buddha when he was twelve, and youthful forces poured into the Nirmanakaya, or soul body, of Buddha. This is how it became possible for Buddha to become active in the early Rosicrucian schools, and eventually perform the mission to Mars.
Rudolf Steiner spoke in two places in 1913 about the spiritual identity of Jesus of Nazareth as the unfallen Adam Soul, as well as having incarnated as Krishna in relation to the three pre-earthly deeds of Christ. Both courses concern the Bhagavad Gita, which centers on Krishna, and how the Nathan Jesus relates.
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA142/English/AP1971/19130101p01.html
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA146/English/AP1968/19130603p01.html
https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA114/English/RSP1964/GosLuk_index.html